Faidon Liambotis wrote:
Andreas, hi,
[please Cc me on replies]
Andreas Jellinghaus wrote:
thanks. I think smart card pins are too important to be passed to other
modules. so I removed that code completely.
I have to disagree here. Smart card pins are indeed sensitive but I
think that PAM is trustworthy enough to handle it.
this is irrelevant. PINs, like all sensitive information, should
be handled on a need-to-know basis. So the question is not if
pam is trustworthy enough or not, the question is: do other pam
modules really need to know the PIN.
Passing the authentication token may be useful in certain scenarios.
Think for example a situation when you want to decrypt something (e.g. a
file or even your ~) when logging in. Prompting *twice* (or more!) for
the PIN is user unfriendly -- not to mention security implications.
well most cards let you do as many private key operations as you like
if this has been specified in the card profile (well, this of course
requires that the card won't be reseted ...).
If the card explicitly requires a PIN verification before each operation
caching the PIN is not a good idea and you should perhaps use another
card (profile).
I really hope you'll reconsider since I'm already using the feature.
how do you use it ?
Cheers,
Nils
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